XP Pro and Vista Business 32 bit

[Guest]

I am having an unusual problem.

I have a desktop running XP pro which is hard wired to the wireless router.

I bought a HP laptop running XP pro and it worked fine with the desktop
connecting through the wireless router. As I had bought this laptop recently
and opted for a vista upgrade HP sent me vista business 32 bit. I followed
the instruction given by HP regarding installing vista.

Now the problem. After installing vista I installed the HP drivers for
vista. I then went on to connect to the wireless router which was a breeze.
After i got connected to the router I noticed that I could see and access my
desktop shared files on the laptop (I did not and have not yet configured the
network). The workgroup name on the desktop is different compared to the
default vista "WORKGROUP".

My question is how in the world did Vista manage to access the desktop which
had a completely different workgroup? Is this something to do with vista or
is it something to do with XP pro?

Any information on this would be helpful.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

MS Vista did manage to do that, however the network setup directions also
say: "If all computers belong to the same workgroup, access will be faster."